About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Thursday, May 19, 2016

There are workplace ethics implications to how we interpret
the NTSB findings of the Amtrak train wreck in Philadelphia in May 2015,here. Everything in this post is "impersonal."

The train engineer lost “situational awareness” when
distracted by workplace-related radio chatter (not cell phone) from other
trains about rocks thrown at trains in the area.

It’s certainly true, then, that from a personnel issue,
there are extenuating circumstances regarding the engineer’s performance in an unexpected situation. There was possibly a perceived terror threat,
and if perpetrators for the rock throwing were apprehended, they would face
prosecution to the full extent of the law. And in one of the most curved
sections of track in the NE corridor (I have ridden it many times), Amtrak had
not yet implemented “positive train control”, which would have prevented the
accident.

Still, one of the points of the workplace is that the
worker, if professional, steps up to the occasion when challenged. In my experience in IT, a lot of that
happened when “on call” for production problems. More seriously, it was to avoid mistakes in
handling production files and software that could cause catastrophe.

Over time, the security to protect the worker from his own
mistakes got better, at least during my own “beautiful career”. Starting in the late 1980s, it became
standard practice in many (IBM) shops to deny applications programmers routine update
access to production elements. By the
early 1990s, elevation procedures were typically locked down to guarantee load
module integrity. Of course, elevation procedures had to be enforced by
management and data control, and in the earliest days sometimes they were
not.

Even so, there is no such thing as a right to be protected
from every conceivable mistake one could make in any conceivable
situation. That’s the point of having a
job as a human.

I wonder how such security plays out in workplaces like
Facebook and Google.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

The New York Times applauds (“Making Overtime Fair Again”)
the Obama administration Labor Department rule to require time-and-a-half for
overtime for lower paid “salaried” workers (setting a threshold at about
$47000) here.

This would not help salaried in-house programmers, who
usually make more and are often on-call.
It will help workers mainly in retail, convenience, and fast food, more
in rural areas. But it's customary to pay W-2 contract employees on IT projects hourly through staffing firms (often with a per diem).

It would tend to discourage employers from goading workers into
lowballing one another (the antithesis of paid family leave).

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The TSA is plagued by a shortage of screeners, as many quit
after only a short stint on the job, out of job pressure on tedium. The Port
Authority of NYNJ has threatened to go back to private companies. Here’ s a recentstoryfrom San Francisco.

In 2002, the TSA was essentially unreachable by phone as
screener jobs opened. At first, the TSA
hired only people with previous experience.
But later it had open houses and was prepared to train many workers. I went to one such open house in Bloomington,
MN in August 2002. I went and quickly determined it was not for me. There had
been an extremely long and detailed application from and BI.

But the ability to return to a regimented style of work
sounds like a “pay your dues” issue in an unequal economy. You wear a uniform, like you are in the military. (In 2004, Independence Air was hiring gate agents at Dulles for $9.50 an hour, again, uniformed. I went to that job fair.)

In late 2003, the TSA advertised for part time screeners at
Reagan, and I failed the test given at CompUSA.
There was a personality test (true false, almost 400 questions) and a
test in recognizing threats on screening machines.

I was also concerned about the idea of doing pat-downs, a
kind of forced intimacy that had followed the military issue.

The screener shortage is especially nettlesome for those who
must travel frequently for work. I last
did that in 1997.

There is increasing concern about the possibility of hard-to-detect plastic explosives being put into carryon laptops. Could this complicate business travel even further?

Friday, May 13, 2016

Recently, on Windows 10 on an HP machine, I’ve had a few
glitches with Microsoft Office, specifically Word.

One time, it wouldn’t come up after Restart. Another Restart fixed it.

Yesterday, I got a “critical process died” when typing into
Word. I had saved the file once, but not
yet exited Word. Usually, it recovers
the last saved file. This time, it
didn’t, but that seems to because it was caught trying to save the “Most Recent”.

Then I found Word couldn’t even do a “Save As”. Finally, after a couple of restarts, the
“most recent” seemed to fix itself. I
could save. But I have trouble saving it
in a new directory. I get “Word has stopped working”. I have to copy it myself with file explorer,
then it works.

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

I had a problem playing an Amazon Prime rented movie yesterday, in Google Chrome, on both a Windows 10 (Toshiba) and Windows 7 (Dell) machine. I was able to play it on a MacBook without incident, after Amazon prompted me to install the latest version of Microsoft Silverlight (ironic on the Mac) – with Safari and OS Yosemite. The obvious help on Amazon had listed mobile devices that could play Prime, but didn’t mention PC;s. The chat session customer service asked me to try a browser “New Tab” and try again.

Amazon tweeted me a linktoday with how you resolve Silverlight error 6013. It’s rather complicated, and it involves issues with Digital Rights Management (DRM), intended to prevent copyright infringement or illegal duplication – much criticized, especially by Electronic Frontier Foundation.

(used for analytics)

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for billsitjobs.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about my privacy policy, please feel free to contact me by email at JBoushka@aol.com.

At billsitjobs.blogspot.com , the privacy of my visitors is of extreme importance to me. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by billsitjobs.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files Like many other Web sites, billsitjobs.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons billsitjobs.blogspot.com does not use cookies.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on billsitjobs.blogspot.com .
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to billsitjobs.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link.

Some of my advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on my site. My advertising partners include ....... Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on billsitjobs.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

billsitjobs.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. billsitjobs.blogspot.com 's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.